å Tuesday, October 13th, 2015

Cheaper discounted work from users and participants is a great point that Ross makes regarding cheap labor, and reasons due to other forms of media.  I will use the Reality TV show contestant for example; while we watch these shows whether we want to admit it or not, we are using them as a form of entertainment.  Contestants and participants of reality show television are exploited in a way that their lives are exposed and used to depict real life actions as a way to gain exposure and fame.  These contestants and participants are often used as a cheapened and discounted form of labor by the media to be use for entertainment purposes in order to bring business such as advertisements to the media forum for capital gain.

According to readwrite.com; the definition of Attention Economy is a marketplace where consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention.

This means that as a consumer, I am willing to pay attention to ads for products and services if I can be heard through blogs, feeds and posts.  The sad truth is that this is an “attention economy” where information is written and posted online and the writer has no rights to the content anymore because it is owned by the company for which is distributing the data.  Therefore, my definition of Ross’ “attention economy” is how authors are all out trying to be heard and attract attention while submitting their work to big business, but are not recognized and or compensated appropriately.  In addition; work is not protected and is vulnerable to the Capitalist to produce the author’s work as if it belonged to them.

Readwrite.com also explains: News feeds illustrate the point well, since they ask for consumers attention in exchange for the opportunity to show them advertising. Search engines also show ads (asking for consumers attention) in exchange for helping users find answers online (a service provided for free in exchange for that attention).

A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice – they get to choose where their attention is ‘spent’. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around – and that creates more opportunities to sell.

Native advertising

I have to agree with Taylor when she argues that “many hoped the Internet would help create a more varied cultural landscape, advertising dollars continue to distort the market by creating perverse incentives, encouraging the production of irresistibly clickable content” because I am one of many who thought that this would be the case.  In fact, as I click on today, I am bombarded with “unnecessary” advertisements that interrupt my reason for visiting a site.  Taylor’s definition in the book of “native advertising” explains how a site like Buzz Feed, a person would be hit with many advertisements with many different messages in order to market their product to a consumer, who may not necessarily be interested in the product but is forced to view the brand and its content in an attempt to coerce the consumer in to buying.

Tastemakers

Another example of unnecessary advertisement or public notice would be companies collaborating with one another to form double messages that may not pertain to each other’s business, but like native advertising, force their products or services on to the reader.  Tastemakers will coerce the reader of a site to see both ads and send a message that (although not connected) will have the viewer believe that both products are doubly good and therefore should be consumed.  Taylor explains that Tastemakers are often partnered with Brands in order to sell things to readers.  She states that “this kind of corporate saturation has long been the dream of free market acolytes” which only means that ads are being marketed freely, with or without the permission of the reader or viewer.  It often puts me in the mind of television commercials, when (we) the viewer of television are interrupted by ads, yet we pay for cable television and should watch freely without interruption since we’ve paid.  So, I often wonder, if we are paying cable, and the advertisers are paying cable, who wins and what are we getting as consumers, since the advertisers are getting their products and services out there, what are we actually getting.

“access content and distribution networks”

According to Drupal.org, Content Access is a module that allows you to manage permissions for content types by role and author. It allows you to specify custom view, edit and delete permissions for each content type. Optionally you can enable per content access settings, so you can customize the access for each content node.  After reading Taylor’s chapter, my understanding of access content is when Capitalist are able to manage data online and regardless of permissions and content types, are able to change the content and delete permissions for each content type.  Therefore giving the Capitalist the ability to customize the access for each content type and putting a person’s information or property in an unsafe realm where property is unprotected and vulnerable to thievery.  In other words, data is shared, stolen and sold to the highest bitter, and the person of the property is unaware and ill-informed about rights and protection. A distribution network is a form of sharing this unsafe, unprotected information to big business that would use your data to market and sell.

Taylor breaks Access Content and Distribution Networks in two different groups of Capitalist who make money by selling, and those who make money by controlling.  She explains in the chapter that those companies are like Google and Facebook are the Capitalist that control what people are distributing and make their money by this format.  Where the content sellers are so vulnerable and not fully protected under copyright laws, but are in the business of selling products like music and perhaps movies